Finisar expands optical interconnect offerings at SC13
Finisar Corp. (NASDAQ: FNSR) has introduced new supercomputing optical interconnect products at the Supercomputing 2013 event this week. These products use 10G, 14G, and 25G building blocks common across the portfolio to support a wide variety of protocols, including InfiniBand, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SAS and PCIe.
Finisar's 25G-enabled products include enhancements to the established Quadwire and C.wire active optical cables, board-mounted optical assemblies (BOA), and QSFP28 optical transceivers. These products support the latest InfiniBand EDR and 100 Gigabit Ethernet protocols, enabling the fastest applications in high-performance computing today, the company says.
The 10G/14G-enabled products include SFPwire, Quadwire, and C.wire active optical cables, as well as SFP+, QSFP+, and CXP transceivers. These products are designed for InfiniBand QDR/FDR, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, SAS, and PCIe protocols.
The products use such Finisar core technology components as vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs), photodiodes, and ICs. Leveraging a common set of building blocks shortens development times and improves manufacturing efficiency, the company claims. In addition, Finisar says its active optical cables offer a lightweight, more compact alternative to traditional copper cables.
During SC13, Finisar will also demonstrate its suite of 25G building blocks in an optical engine form factor, Finisar's 25G BOA. The BOA is designed to provide exceptionally low power and the highest density optical interface for supercomputing interconnects. The live demonstration will show a 25G BOA connected to a second 25G BOA with integrated CDRs on both transmit and receive channels. Finisar's BOA features what the company asserts is the world's fastest VCSEL, previously shown to work at speeds up to 56 Gbps. The BOA is currently sampling and is expected to be in full production in early 2014.
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